'I'm sure I don't care for it,' said Clara; 'mountains and pictures are not a bit in my line, unless I had Isabel and you, Louis, to make me care.'
'Learn, then,' said Louis; 'it shows that your education is defective. Yes, I see,' he continued, as Clara signed heavily, 'but you don't know the good it will do you to have your mind forcibly turned aside.'
'If I could only sit quiet in a corner,' said Clara.
'So you will, in many a corner of a railway carriage.'
She smiled a little. 'The truth is,' she said, 'that poor Uncle Oliver cannot be quiet. I can't see what pleasure Italy will be to him, but he is too miserable at home. I never saw such restless unhappiness!' and her eyes filled with tears. 'Oh, Louis! I am glad you would not let me say anything about leaving him. Sometimes when he bids me good night, he puts his arm round me, and says so pitifully that I do not care for him. Do you know, I think mine is the little spar of love that he tries to cling to in the great ship wreck; and I feel quite sorry and hypocritical that it is such a poor, miserable shred.'
'It will grow,' said Louis, smiling.
'I don't know; he is terribly provoking sometimes—and without dear granny to hinder the rubs. O, Louis! it is true that there is no bearing to stay at home in those great empty rooms!'
'And Jane?'
'Oh, she goes,' said Clara, recovering a smile; 'she is firmly persuaded that we shall run into another revolution, and as she could not frighten us by the description of your wounds, she decides to come and dress ours when we get any. Dear old Jenny, I am glad she goes; she is the only creature I can talk to; but, Louis, before my uncle comes in, I have something to give you.'
It was the letters that Mary had written to her aunt since the parting, and the Spanish books which she had left in her charge.